Blockchain technology for the Telecoms arena

Blockchain, the underlying mechanism of the Bitcoin or crypto-currency might possibly be the next major development in the telecoms arena.

Blockchain technology has the potential in many other areas of our business lives which is why vendors are currently pouring money into the development of new products.

The Blockchain is essentially a database of shared information, incorruptible and continually updated. It is possible to programme Blockchain to record anything of value, which rather than being shared on a central computer, is replicated across an entire network. With all records public and easily verifiable, there is no central system to hack or gain entry to.

Telecoms giant, Avaya has already begun to explore the usage of Blockchain. With Happiness Index on Blockchain, Avaya is demonstrating how organisations can leverage the technology to securely collect and integrate data from multiple sources, such as different contact centres, emails, social media, web and chat platforms.

“For too many people, Blockchain is a solution looking for a problem. Happiness Index on Blockchain highlights how Avaya has transformed its unified communications and contact centre platforms to integrate emerging disruptive technology trends into the customer experience with agility and speed,” said Laurent Philonenko, Chief Technology Officer, Avaya.

“Marrying enormous volumes of historical and real-time data to understand customer satisfaction is a huge challenge for our customers. By applying Blockchain, data analytics and artificial intelligence on different data profiles and sources, we have built a globally unique solution that allows large organisations to measure and manage sentiment for every single one of their customers, as it happens.”

With telecoms operators continually looking to provide cost effective services, whilst increasing trust and transparency, it is becoming clear that Blockchain has its place. The distributed nature of this technology will enable operators to deliver some services without the need for expensive infrastructure or third party intermediaries.

Security of information is one of the major advantages of Blockchain technology.

Where there is a lot of data to manage and a clear need for secure data between machines and sensors, decentralisation of the validation and verification processes means greater security, without the concern of rogue devices infiltrating the data flow.

John Tolton, Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) at The Sphere commented, “The global revenue from telecom services is expected to exceed 1.2 trillion euros in 2018. Estimates for the cost of fraud alone are as high as 6.9% of the overall market revenue value, or about $155 billion every year, and this issue plagues buyers and suppliers. So there’s a huge market opportunity for operators and the partners who sell their services to reclaim that lost revenue.”

MF Communications supplies new and used telecom network equipment and spare parts to organisations including fixed and mobile telephone operators and carriers, data centres and governments.